1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the creation and use of multiple phase emulsions or gels to produce a product suitable for burner fuel, combustion or explosive applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Burner fuel and or combustion and or explosive emulsions or gels of various types have been known in the art for many years. To date, all the emulsions for the various combustion applications known in the art involve the basic two phase system of emulsification. Generally speaking, these systems or types of burner fuel, combustion or explosive emulsions or gels have involved various chemical systems or combinations of chemicals of a synthetic or biological origin to create emulsions or gels known as oil in water (O/W) or water in oil (W/O) type emulsions or gels.
Some of the advantages of the basic emulsion systems described above are to allow for better atomization of a burner fuel oil or other combustible or explosive material to create a more efficient burn, combustion or explosive process. While the basic O/W emulsion system allows for small particle size oil droplet emulsions and in many cases lower product viscosity than the fuel oil alone, they also force the burn or combustion process to evaporate the surrounding water and consume the oil droplet from the oil droplets' outer surface to the center as in a conventional nozzle atomization of the fuel oil or combustion components alone. The burn or combustion efficiency of the conventional O/W emulsion system is then dependent upon the size of the oil droplet and amount of water in the system.
There also exists several advantages to the basic W/O emulsion systems. Among some of the advantages to the W/O emulsion are that they allow for a secondary atomization of the emulsion droplet by the exploding water droplet that has been trapped as the discontinuous phase when making the initial W/O emulsion. Another advantage of the W/O emulsion is that oil is on the external phase of the droplet and therefore burns or combusts similar to a conventional burner fuel or combustion process. Also, excess water in the W/O emulsion can greatly decrease burn or combustion efficiency. Further, efficiency of the W/O emulsion is also greatly dependent upon the mechanical atomization created by the nozzle just prior to burning as well as the secondary atomization created by the water droplet exploding and further atomizing the mechanically atomized water in oil droplet.
These two phase emulsion systems have offered the industry various advantages depending upon the chemistry of the emulsion system, the type of burner fuel or combustible or explosive products being emulsified and other related problems specific to the overall emulsion system under study at the time. The two phase systems have in the past limited themselves to either oil in water or water in oil type systems.
Previous to the advent of this technology, those skilled in the art of burner fuel or combustion or explosive emulsions tried to maximize the advantages of one of these individual two phase systems (either W/O or O/W) and minimize its disadvantages. It is the intent of this technology to combine the advantages of both the O/W and the W/O burner fuel or combustion or explosion emulsions into a single multiple phase (for example three alternating phases of W/O/W or O/W/O) burner fuel or combustion or explosive emulsion product there by minimizing the disadvantages of the individual two phase type emulsion. This new multiple phase burner fuel or combustion or explosion emulsion allows for the advantages of each of the two phase type emulsions (the W/O emulsion and the O/W emulsion) by first forming a W/O emulsion and then emulsifying this W/O product again into a continuous water phase to create the advantages of the W/O and O/W emulsions and the formation of the final multiple (in this case three) phases of W/O/W that is the composition this new burner fuel or combustion or explosive emulsion. The skilled burner fuel, combustion or explosives technologist could not, however, capitalize on the inherent advantages offered by the combination of an oil phase discontinued in water (O/W) and a water phase discontinued in oil (W/O) in alternating fashion (i.e., multiple phase emulsions of at least W/O/W or O/W/O) in one single emulsion system alone.